opinion

The 2004 Human Development Report on Panama, recently released by the United Nations Development Program, for whom I had the honor of participating in their technical assistance council, is a document of great importance, especially in order to find the situation of young men and women in our country. The document states many key aspects. Let us see some of its results.

Panama maintains a medium-high level of human development, favored by basic advances in education and health, which compensates in a way for a fall in the standard of living, which principally stems from the increase in jobs which pay less than the minimum wage and is associated with the growth of the informal sector and the deterioration of the quality of jobs.

More than 50 percent of the population that lives in poverty is under 20 years of age, which is to say, a good part of the poor are young, or will be in the short term. Poverty diminishes opportunities such as the search for academic advancement in the hope of a dignified job. It can be noted that only one-third of young people have the basic elements that the modern world demands (technology, education and language).

Panamanian youth (15-24 years of age) are much less influenced by the family, the school and the churches, and much more by the communications media --- television and advertising --- which have rapidly become the principal points of reference for young people in the construction of their identities. This carries with it profound and powerful changes in the forms of learning, relating, communicating and identifying.

Many adults consider the young person as a problem and as someone in conflict with society, as the adult world and Panamanian society in general many times don’t recognize that the young person has an important role in the country’s present and future development. For one example, the total number of cases of young people involved in problems with the law represents only two percent of the youth, and of all criminal cases, only some 3.1 percent can be attributed to young people.

For young people a context of greater informality and flexibility in work exists. This phenomenon is being translated into less Social Security coverage, which affects young people more due to the combined effects of training deficiencies and labor market dynamics. Young Panamanians reported that on the average they initiated their labor experience at the age of 16 years, and generally combined it with studies. Entry into the work force, however, is more frequent in the group of young people between 20 and 24 years of age, as 78.5 percent said that they had worked at one time, double what the 15 to 19-year-old group said. Men (69.5 percent) had worked with a frequency 20 percentage points higher than women.

The majority (76 percent) of the youth are concentrated among those who work or are looking for work, having left education at the secondary level to gain economic independence and help their families. The majority of them want to study more. And there are young people who both work and study, who are probably making a greater effort to strengthen their skills.

For young people it’s crucial to count on diverse supports in their formation of skills and it’s important to point out that the great majority of them obtain their great source of support from their families (97.4 percent), schools (68.4 percent) and the state (18.6 percent). The support they receive in their development process is medium to low, with only 23.7 percent indicating having had a high level of support. By gender, the women indicate that they have received a lower level of support than the men.

Panama has a demographic bonus in its young people, which centers on the fact that the largest age group is no longer 0 to 9 years of age, and that it is calculated that for 2015 it will be the 15 to 24-year-old group, and for 2025, it will be those of 24-34 years. That is to say, the greater number of young people who can find opportunities to take on productive and social roles, the greater will also be the opportunities for them to better their quality of life and socio-economic development.

One of the most promising aspects of youth is its capacity for adaptation. They are rapid change artists, they know how to immediately accommodate themselves to new circumstances, they have the capacity to time and again surmount misfortune, and also to dream and to build new hopes. In other words, many of them have “resilience,” which the report defines as the capacity to rise up in the face of adversity with proactive responses in order to achieve solutions.


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